Compliments of Big Al on RB:
Le Devoir article full text translation:
Here goes my attempt at translating the Le Devoir article, FWIW. It should make for good reading.
LUMENON LOOKING TO SPEED UP TRAFFIC ON THE INFORMATION SUPER-HIGHWAY
THE RESULT OF SEVEN YEARS OF RESEARCH BY TWO MONTREAL UNIVERSITIES
CLAUDE TURCOTTE
LE DEVOIR, SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 11, 1999
Fiber optics were touted, less than a decade ago, as the way to solve the ever increasing demand made on telecommunication and data transmission networks. Today, those same networks are as clogged as ever. Just ask those who sometimes have to wait long minutes to establish a connection on the Internet.
New networks could always be added. This would me much too expensive, explains Dr. Iraj Najafi, who has left behind a brilliant university career to become president and CEO of Lumenon, a fledgeling corporation offering up a much cheaper solution with the technology it has developed to produce photonic chips, allowing transmission of 64 different wavelengths on the same circuit, compared to the two or three wavelengths possible with today's equipment.
This will soon allow a considerable increase in the amount of network traffic at a much cheaper cost than possible from solutions available up until now. The manufacturing of this product is at the startup stage in a small Dorval facility, and has drawn great interest. Production capacity for the first year of operation has already been sold-out even though the product will only be available on the market this spring.
Mr. Najafi declined providing revenue estimates for 2000 for various reasons. He simply stated that "the photonics market is so dynamic right now that prices change on a day to day basis". As its stands, Lumenon is a small corporation who has put together a well rounded group of professional and financial partners who evidently feel comfortable with, and lend credibility, to this new technology. Prior to reaching the commercialization stage, seven years of work have gone into this technology, led by two university researchers, Iraj Najafi at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique and Dr. Mark Andrews at McGill University.
From University researcher to businessman
Of Iranian background, Mr. Najafi came to Montreal in 1986, after receiving Bachelors and Masters degrees from Shiraz University and a PhD in physics from Ecole centrale de Paris. He learned French in three months. He states that he is "always in a hurry". Having completed post-doctorate studies in electrical engineering at University of Florida, he sets roots in Montreal and begins teaching at Ecole Polytechnique. He is later approached by Mr. Andrews, a PhD in chemistry from University of Toronto working on photonic glass and polymers at McGill, to work with him.
"Our fields of expertise complement each other", underlines Lumenon's president, whose primary interest is the conception of optical circuits, whereas his collegue from McGill is a materials expert. From the start, their objective has been to develop a low cost technology. "We have succeeded and now have worldwide recognition", adds Dr. Najafi. Of 350 fellows of The International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE) worlwide, he is one of the three Canadian representatives. As a university researcher, he has published over 300 articles, which is a considerable amount.
Faced with the commercial potential for this new technology, Mr. Najafi nevertheless decided to trade in is career in university research to head of Lumenon, whose name is from the latin "light". "Lumen" is also the unit used to measure light flows.
First, a technology transfer was made by the two universities having participated in the research work, giving each 750,000 shares of Lumenon, for a combined interest of 6% in common shares. Mr. Najafi and Mr. Andrews hold the largest block at 30% of common shares. Molex, a large corporation having 49 plants and 21 offfices worldwide, ranks second with a 25% interest. The other shares are held by various individual investors as well as two institutional investors, Manitex and Pinetree Capital from Toronto. Lumenon sought a NASDAQ listing in order to attract investors who can more easily trade their shares this way.
Because of its distribution network, Molex's involvement is a great advantage to Lumenon, as well as providing the company with a partner for new product development. Lumenon was able to raise $5 million to cover startup costs. The plant's official opening took place on July 6th. The company currently has 15 employees, 9 of which are engineers holding Masters or PhDs.
Growth potential
Prospects for sales growth are impressive. Studies show that the market for dense wavelength multiplexing systems should increase by close to 70% from 1998 to 2004, and will generate sales of $8 billion. It is also expected that the number of Internet users will climb to 500 million by 2005 and that bandwith required will a 100 times what it is today.
Mr. Najafi feels that Lumenon's market share will never exceed 1%, which still gives the company good prospects, having AT&T, Alcatel, Teleglobe and others as potential customers. There are some fifty companies of this category worlwide. The photonic chip being developped by Lumenon can replace equipment currently taking up one cubic foot of space. We will see a similar type of evolution in this market as was witnessed for the huge computers we had in the 70's. Lumenon is reducing the size and the cost. One of the advantages of this chip is that it can easily be replaced if it were to become defective. For the time being, Lumenon is focusing on one product, but the technological platform can be modified and adapted to other types of chips, of which prototypes have already been produced.
Lumenon is currently producing 20 to 30 chips a day using a manual process. These chips, which look like half cd-roms, are produced using a printing process similar to what is done with photography. Company liturature states that "made from a hybrid glass sol-gel applied to a silicon plate, Lumenon's chips bring together the best features of organic polymers (plastic) and glass to produce a revolutionnary material for integrated optical cuircuits".
Research is continuing at the two universities, but the final stage before commercilization is taking place at Lumenon's facilities, and product testing is being performed at Molex installations in Chicago.
Due to expected market development, mr. Najafi is looking at automating to increase capacity. Equipments needed require extreme precision, up to one micron, or on millionth of a metre. This will allow to reach production of up to 500 chips per day. The president is currently pondering the means by which to meet demand in a market experiencing exponential growth. |
